In an effort to fill data, education and tool gaps that could reduce impediments to the expansion of X-ray and e-beam for sterilization, an international collaboration team was formed in 2018. This “Team Sam Nablo” currently has 13 active member organizations that include major players in the medical device and biopharma production industries. After the results of a survey indicated that a gap in the industry was a much simpler, low-cost dose distribution software package, in 2021 the team began development of such a tool.  Compared to existing similar software, it is expected that this software tool will be simpler to use, and take significantly less labor for training and for obtaining dose results; which is hoped to result in many more users who otherwise would not use such software. This presentation describes the current status of the software package, named PUFFIn, for Penelope User Friendly Fast Interface, and provides dose distribution results of actual medical products.

The approach is novel in that it utilizes a Penelope-based graphical user interface to calculate the dose distribution within individual and boxed products. PENELOPE is the acronym for Penetration and ENErgy Loss of Positrons and Electrons. PUFFIn utilizes a voxel method, and one aspect that makes PUFFIn unique is that it does not have the calculational tool (PENELOPE software) embedded inside. This approach has a number of significant advantages over conventional software packages, since the computational engine is not directly linked to the PUFFIn code.

The goal is that the 2D and 3D versions of this software tool will allow 1) Input files that range from hand drawings, to photos, to computer-aided design (CAD) and computed tomography (CT) scans;  and 2) Availability to any user and at no cost.